An undated photo from Copenhagen police shows a man identified as Omar El-Hussein, 22, who is the suspect in the Danish attacks.

People lay flowers outside a synagogue Sunday in Copenhagen where a gunman killed one person and wounded two the day before. Danish police shot and killed the man on Sunday suspected of carrying out two shooting attacks.

COPENHAGEN — The targets were familiar: a cartoonist, police officers and Jews.

The manhunt, too, had echoes: a European capital on virtual lockdown as police searched block by block, with helicopters sweeping the skies.

After the suspect had been shot to death on a Copenhagen street, the profile that surfaced was remarkably similar: a habitual criminal who, after serving time in prison, emerged as an ideologically motivated killer.

A month after homegrown terrorists traumatized France, a 22-year-old who was born and raised in Denmark tormented this nation for 12 hours over a murderous weekend that left many in this normally placid country wondering whether Europe has entered a new normal of fear.

Before a pre-dawn shootout with police ended his spree, the assailant left two people dead and five police officers wounded, having attacked a cafe hosting a debate focused on free speech and a synagogue where a bat mitzvah was underway. In each case, a heavy security presence likely prevented the attack from becoming a massacre.

The parallels between last month’s Paris attacks and the ones here focused investigators’ attention on the possibility that the assailant in Denmark was a copycat killer, “inspired by the events in Paris,” said Jens Madsen, head of the Danish security agency PET, in a news conference Sunday.

The reaction, too, followed familiar patterns. Danish leaders vowed not to shrink from terrorism, as mourners gathered for solemn candlelight vigils to honor the dead.

With Denmark’s small Jewish community feeling especially vulnerable, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu used the occasion of an anti-Semitic attack on European soil to again encourage immigration to the Jewish homeland.

As was the case in the Paris assaults, police said the killer had an extensive rap sheet, including convictions for assault and weapons possession. He also had a history of gang involvement. Although police did not name the suspect, widespread reports in the Danish media identified him as Omar Abdel Hamid el-Hussein and said he had recently been released from prison.

Unlike the killers in Paris, who claimed allegiance to al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, it was not clear whether the attacker here had connections to established extremist organizations. But that might not have mattered.

The assailant first targeted a gathering convened by a Swedish cartoonist, Lars Vilks, to discuss free speech in the age of terrorism. Vilks, 68, has long been marked for death by Islamic extremists for his depictions of the prophet Muhammad.

Vilks and dozens of other attendees survived the Saturday afternoon attack, but a 55-year-old documentary filmmaker, Finn Noergaard, was killed.

The assailant struck again after midnight, shooting a volunteer security guard in the head outside the Great Synagogue of Copenhagen as about 80 people celebrated a bat mitzvah in an adjacent building. The guard, Dan Uzan, 37, was killed, and two police officers were wounded. The suspect fled without gaining access to the building.

Security forces tracked the killer using CCTV footage, and officials said he opened fire on officers as they approached him near an apartment building in an ethnically diverse neighborhood. “The culprit that was shot by the police task force is the person behind both of these assassinations,” Torben Moelgaard Jensen, the chief police inspector, told reporters.

More in News

A member of a "sophisticated cocaine trafficking conspiracy" was convicted Monday in federal court in Denver of conspiring to distribute, and possessing with intent to distribute, five kilograms or more of cocaine, according to prosecutors.

A man who shot two eighth graders at Deer Creek Middle School in 2010, and was found not guilty by reason of insanity to attempted murder, will not be allowed to leave the Colorado Mental Health Institute's grounds without supervision, according to a Jefferson County District Court ruling.

After the San Francisco Bay Area, metro Denver experienced the biggest apartment rent increases this decade in the country. But plenty of new supply should put future rent gains closer to the national average, according to a new report from RealPage, a real estate research firm.